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The worst part, Dean thinks, is that Sam doesn’t act any differently around him.
(Okay, Dean concedes, maybe not the worst, worst part.)
But it certainly doesn’t make sense. Sam doesn’t even bring it up. And Dean gets that sometimes Sam brushes past when one of them is magicked into trying to kill the other, and so forth, but this, this feels different. It is different. And Sam doesn’t even have the decency to hate Dean for it.
(Dean falls asleep whiskey-after-whiskey and sees dimensions his brain isn’t supposed to comprehend. The screams are twisted, animalistic -- surreal and sickly symphonies. Pain can bend like nothing else. Agony is an art. Haunting, horrifying, and Dean likes it all so much. There’s a sick underlying tension he can’t place. Sam is on a rack, and he’s no longer human -- he’s just a game that enough pain can break.)
Dean wakes up gasping and sick and longing for something that makes him think he should have grabbed his pistol and eaten it the first day he crawled his way out of his grave and sent himself back downstairs.
He can’t fall back asleep, so he makes breakfast, even tries to make Sam some sort of green smoothie abomination as the guilt corrodes inside his chest. Sam thanks him, even drinks it when Dean knows he did a bad job, and eats beside Dean as if Dean wasn’t slicing into Sam’s flesh and making him scream in agony less than forty-eight hours ago.
“Possible haunting in Helena,” Sam says, over coffee. “Man killed in a well-locked room, reports of electricity on the fritz in the apartment building, but the security system seems to have remained intact.”
“Probably just someone covering their ass,” Dean responds. He does think it’s possible, but they’ve gone out on less, and it’s not like Sam hasn’t looked more into it than his one-sentence summary to bring it up. But he’s on edge. He wants Sam to fight him.
“Maybe,” Sam says, all sour-faced. He sips his coffee. “Look, maybe we could call and pretend to be maintenance for the building, ask about cold spots before making the drive?”
“Really, Sam? Another thing you’re half-assing?” Dean asks. Sam takes a double staccato breath in. Dean wishes he could count it as a change. He wishes Sam’s tense posture was new. He wishes Sam looking at him like he’s ready for Dean to rip his throat out was novel instead of a bedwork he spends most of his time trying to ignore.
“Yeah, sorry, yeah, well we can head out then?” Sam says. It makes Dean feel angry. It makes Dean feel sick.
“I’ll look into it after breakfast,” Dean says. “Don’t want to make the drive for nothing.”
Sam nods, lips tight. Always with the acquiescence these days. This isn’t his fucking brother.
(Dean wonders if he can’t stop making his brother feel all tight inside and desperate to find the right thing to say to him for the same reason he’s dreaming of lighting his flesh on fire. This isn’t Dean either. The only good thing Dean ever did was save Sam from the fire. But some twisted part of Dean relents so sweetly, but wouldn’t that just make it more poetic?
It’s unfair, Dean thinks, that he got to cut into Sam and delight in his pain, and he didn’t even burn Sam. Dean knows this shouldn’t feel like a missed opportunity. He knows, he knows, he knows.)
“Let me know. I’ll keep searching for something else,” Sam says. It grates Dean. Sam should argue back. Sam should be upset when Dean doesn’t respect his perspective on principle. Sam should do a lot of things, and Dean can’t tell how much of it is Lucifer’s fault and how much of it is his fault that Sam doesn’t.
Whose fault is it that Dean can torture his baby brother, and his baby brother doesn’t change anything about the way he interacts with him?
They can’t go on like this.
Maybe it doesn’t change anything for Sam. Maybe it’s just another day in the life. Maybe Dean’s only this fucked up inside because of it because he liked it. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with himself. Who he is and what Alastair painted him are indistinguishable. He wonders if Alastair would be proud. He wants to die.
“That desperate to get out, huh?” Dean says, and for some reason, his tone is all bitter and cruel.
Sam’s lips are pursed now.
“Are you okay, Dean?” Sam asks. It’s so simple and it’s so infuriating, because Dean isn’t, and he wanted Sam to ask, and now he sees that’s why he’s being such a dismissive ass. He wants to bite out some scathing remark. He’s fighting a tight tension in his chest. He wanted Sam to feel upset just so he’d try to talk to Dean about how Dean’s upset.
As if Sam wasn’t the one who had been covered in blood, breath shaky, pulse weak.
“Are we really just not going to talk about it?” Dean asks. He wanted to sound indignant, but he just comes off desperate.
Sam at least doesn’t try to pretend he doesn’t know what Dean means. Dean doesn’t think he could handle that.
“Neither of us understood what was really happening. It’s fine.”
“It’s fine?” Dean says, flabbergasted. “Sam, what is wrong with you? Do you not get what happened?” Sam looks uncomfortable, especially with the raised voice.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay, I’m--”
“You’re sorry?”
Sam’s breath catches. Dean wonders if something’s finally going to happen, going to break.
“I just mean,” Sam adds, and he’s trying to fix it. Trying to find a way to find reason in Dean, but Dean doesn’t feel reasonable considering the mess of how Sam’s perceiving this. “You weren’t yourself.”
It’s like swallowing bile.
“I was,” Dean says. He doesn’t know how he can face this. He can’t. He can’t, he can’t he can’t. But Sam should see. Maybe Sam just never really fucking got it. What he is, what Alastair made him to be--
“It felt like Hell, but with me?” Sam says. “I, I get it, okay? I’m not, judging you, if that’s what you think.”
No, Dean thinks. No, Dean doesn’t think Sam’s judging him. Dean just desperately wants him to.
“I tortured you.”
“Yeah, and Lucifer made me beat you half to death. It’s not your fault. We’re good.”
It’s funny, how Sam just casually throws that around. Dean feels a little high. The air is thin and cotton candy.
“You begged me so fast,” Dean says. That gets a reaction out of Sam. His eyes go downcast. Dean likes the shame. It makes him feel like maybe there’s a reason Sam’s acting like nothing happened. Dean’s not ready to admit that the way Sam acts doesn’t change at all when his brother has tortured him. He wants an out.
“I was scared,” Sam admits. Says it so evenly. “I’m not a liability. I just thought maybe you’d stop.”
The implicit “you didn’t” makes Dean want to claw his eyes out. He can’t stand the heat in his head.
“Yeah, and would you also beg Lucifer like that.”
It’s not even a question. Alastair is a product of Lucifer’s design. And Dean’s a product of Alastair’s. Does it matter that there’s a middle ground? It breaks Dean’s heart. He didn’t want to be this. He didn’t want Sam to see him like this. He didn’t want to become what Alastair made him, but it just kept going on and on. He didn’t feel time had passed in years. It was just an infinity. That dragged, and dragged, and dragged.
He’s so caught up in his self-hatred he can barely pay attention to the hurt and shame that he’s incited on Sam. Sam looks so tense, all whipcord wound. Dean can’t think right. Everything’s so fucked up.
“You’re not Lucifer,” Sam eventually says. Ever-so-careful. He’s so measured and smart, and it enrages Dean. Because Dean can’t be.
Sam shouldn’t be trying to reassure him now. Why won’t he fight back? Why won’t he?
“I mean, I guess you were more made in his image, huh,” Dean says. He’s not sure why he says it. But Sam breathes out, wounded, and he thinks maybe that’s why.
Sam doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t defend himself, even though what Dean is saying is nonsense.
Doesn’t Sam get it? Lucifer never altered Sam the way Alastair altered Dean. Sam still exists, he’s just remnants. Dean is Alastair in the flesh. Sam may have killed Alastair in theory, but he’s still sitting across the table from him.
Neither of them say anything for a desolate expanse. Sam finally says, “What did, what did, what did I do, what can I do?”
It’s not until then that Dean really sees Sam. And what Dean’s done.
He’s been torturing him again, hasn’t he? No weapons, no blood, and no blurred accountability.
It’s all suddenly swung clear. His love doesn’t feel distant, but rather smothering. He feels Sam’s shame and his pain and what Dean’s been doing to him, and it hurts like nothing he can handle. The guilt is hot-whitening, clearing out all processes in his head. What can he possibly say? What can he possibly do considering everything he’s ever done?
“Nothing, Sammy,” Dean says. “You didn’t-- uh, do anything wrong. I’m sorry,” he says. The guilt makes his head feel all expanding and airy. He thinks it could all snap back, but he focuses on Sam’s pain. He can pretend it’s novel.
“It’s, it’s, okay,” Sam says. “We’re good?” Dean’s brain is neon and gaudy, rubbery saturated stars and glitter all floating around and bumping against everything else. He’s evil; he’s irredeemable; he doesn’t know how to see absolutely anything else.
He can’t even look at Sam. Sam’s sitting there trying to ask if they’re good because he wants to know if Dean’s going to keep hurting him. Dean can barely make out a, “Yeah, we’re good, we’re good Sammy,” because there’s something bloated squelching in his throat. He doesn’t believe it in the slightest, but it’s what Sam needs right now.
Sam nods twice. He doesn’t seem brave enough (or stupid enough) to broach anything more.
“You should uhm call that place, in uh Helena, right? That’s smart, could save us a lot of time,” Dean says. He’s giving Sam an out of the conversation because Dean doesn’t know how to handle it. They should talk about it. Dean should find a way to face the depths of poison and darkness inside of himself. But he’s not able to. The intensity of his guilt is a catch-22.
The best he can do is to care about Sam when he can and delude himself into thinking he’s some type of hero when it’s an option and pretend like he’s capable of any form of homeostasis when he’s not.
He’s really really not.
(But he knows he will always always try to protect Sam. He really doesn’t want the flames to get him. He thinks of goading Sam about begging Lucifer, and Sam’s lack of denial.
Even if he is a failure.)